The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation Hardcover – January 18, 2022

And if the suspects are unusual, what then? No spoiler alerts needed here. This is a book definitely worth reading by everyone for many reasons. Certainly, all readers know who Anne Frank was and the majority will have read her diary. Why then pursue the topic of her betrayal some 78 years after her arrest and deportation? Everyone, including victims, witnesses and betrayers are dead so why investigate this cold case now?The first half of the book provides details about the Frank family and the many brave Dutch acquaintances who aided their hiding and survival for about two years in the Annex. All the Franks were born in Germany. In fact, Otto Frank could trace his German ancestry back to the 16th century. This was insufficient for his native land. After the Nuremberg Laws, the Franks were stripped of their citizenship and had to flee. One might say, this was the first betrayal. In Holland, the Frank girls learned Dutch and attended school. The Franks were considered "resident aliens". When the Germans invaded and captured the Netherlands, the Franks once again became stateless. This was a second betrayal. When, in 1942 Margot Frank, Anne's older sister, received a letter from the Nazis to report for work duty i.e. forced labor camp interment, Otto Frank made the decision to go into hiding. What Otto did with his business and how the seclusion in the Annex was arranged and abetted is worth reviewing.Actually, there are three Anne Frank diaries. It is fascinating to learn how this happened and who owns the diaries. Two of the diaries were indeed written by Anne and a third copy, used for publication in 70 languages and in the movie and the play, is an abrogated version of Anne's original diary. Mr Frank removed portions of the diary that he found "distasteful". This was yet another betrayal. As the sole survivor in his family, Mr. Frank did his best to protect, preserve and yes, promote Anne's diary. When it was first published in 1947, he received hate mail that accused him of fabricating the diary and making money off the corpses of the holocaust. There is indeed a contemporary quality to the diary's acceptance or nonacceptance.The second part of the book details the work of the latest international investigative team that searched for the betrayer of the Franks. There had been two other investigations. One took place directly after WWII and the other in the 1960's. The lead of this current investigation is a retired American FBI agent. He wrote a very compelling last chapter in the book. The reader gets a tour of the Amsterdam office used for this investigation. The team utilized archives from around the world, experts in many scientific fields including handwriting analysis and artificial intelligence, and interviewed third generation relatives of some of the main players. The massive data base generated has been donated to the Dutch state.Since this book has appeared, there have been both kudos and condemnations heaped upon it. This reviewer urges everyone to read this important work with an open mind and draw his/her own conclusions. In the end. there is so much to learn and ponder long after the last page.

Author and historian Rosemary Sullivan takes the reader into the Nazi police state of wartime Netherlands, as she reports on a recent investigation about one of the enduring mysteries of World War 2. The people of the Netherlands suffered 5 years of brutal occupation by the Germans. Many thousands died, including nearly all of the country's Jewish population, who were systematically hunted down and sent to the death camps. The most famous of these victims were Anne Frank and her family, who hid for 2 years in a small area of a house in central Amsterdam. Someone informed the German police about their presence, but despite repeated investigations, there were no reliable answers as to the identity of the informer. In recent years, a Dutch filmmaker and several others began a "cold case investigation," using modern techniques and technology, as well as a team of experts, most notably a retired FBI Agent. The author begins this book with an introduction to the investigation, and the immense challenges involved. However, the bulk of the book presents a detailed description of wartime Amsterdam, with a focus on how the Frank family struggled to survive, facing the horrors of life under the Nazis. Later, the book returns to the investigation, as numerous suspects are identified and discarded, until one remains. To Sullivan's credit, she discusses this sensitive subject in terms of how the Nazis warped morality and degraded everyday existence. Thus, this book offers a fascinating "detective" story, as well as a historical perspective on the evils of fascism imposed by the Nazis. As someone who has visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam (highly recommended), I believe that her story deserves to be told, despite concerns from some reviewers about who might "profit". Although I have read widely about various periods in human history, why is it that books about the Holocaust receive this kind of criticism?

Cold case investigations are some of the toughest for law enforcement. The cold case of who betrayed Anne Frank, perhaps the most eloquent defender of humanism amid Nazi barbarity, has been looked into twice by the Dutch government and subject to countless theories; like other mysteries which engaged the wider public, these have ranged from the reasonable to the rather farfetched.The Betrayal of Anne Frank is mainly a marshaling of evidence in support of a particular theory. One by one potential suspects are discredited and a compelling account is given: one leader of the Amsterdam Jewish community gave away the address of her hiding place in an effort to save his family.But there are strong reasons to think that this isn’t the last word. As Rosemary Sullivan states, activity in the secret annex was something of an open secret amongst neighbors. And, if the betrayer simply provided the address from a list held by collaborators, there would have been many potential suspects with access to that information.So, while a compelling account of the thoroughness of the investigation, an impressive gathering of support from documentary and anecdotal sources and a narrative that ties the pieces of evidence together, this book is, in the end, yet another iteration of plausible accounts of Anne Frank’s betrayer.It would be wrong not to point out that the first hundred pages are devoted to explaining Frank’s life, legacy and importance to the world. Throughout, the reader is given a visceral sense of what wartime Amsterdam was like. Thus, it’s still a book worth reading as long as one doesn’t expect the conclusiveness of a DNA test. Moreover, even if there were no new theory or investigation, one can hardly fault a book that keeps Anne’s light burning for another generation.